Vanita Gupta, the civil rights activist attorney is back in the news again. This time she took on the Bush administration and won in terms of affecting a landmark settlement in a federal lawsuit challenging conditions at an immigrant detention center in Texas.
Gupta, who less than four years ago won freedom and compensation for more than 40 African Americans wrongly incarcerated in a drug sting in Tulia, Texas, this time as a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union led the team that settled with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which resulted in a marked improvement in the conditions for illegal immigrant children and their families inside the 512-bed T Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas.
Dozens of children were released from the facility as a result of the litigation and as a result of the deal, a trial that was set to open in the US District Court was averted with ICE beginning to alleviate the conditions of those detained in terms of education, medical care, recreation and privacy standards in its first large holding facility for illegal immigrant families that had opened in May 2006.
Gupta, who in 2004, was presented with the first India Abroad Publisher's Special Award for Outstanding Achievement, said, "This is a huge victory not only for the children and families that have been released from Hutto, but for every detainee held at the facility, now or in the future."
"Though we continue to believe that Hutto is an inappropriate place to house children, conditions have drastically improved in areas like education, recreation, medical care and privacy," she said.
The settlement is the result of extensive litigation and mediation in consolidated lawsuits filed earlier this year against Michael Chertoff, secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, and six officials from ICE on behalf of 26 immigrant children. The children are between the ages of one and 17 years and were detained with their parents, who, in almost all cases, were awaiting determinations on their asylum claims.
Soon after the litigation commenced, ICE instituted a policy of detaining at Hutto only families placed in expedited removal proceedings and began to issue bonds for asylum seekers who passed their credible fear interviews.
ICE said in a statement that it "continues to improve Hutto," and that the facility "is a safe and healthy environment for children and adults."
The agency pledged that it will continue to enforce the immigration laws "in a humane and responsible manner," and under the terms of the agreement will place families who have a legal claim to contest deportation in the Hutto center only is no other space is available.
Gupta, who joined ACLU's Racial Justice Program last year, told rediff.com, "I am really thrilled by this victory. This was a precedent-setting case in the area of immigration detention, which is on a fast rise in this country."
While acknowledging that "there were South Asian families detained at Hutto," Gupta and her team who took on the US Department of Justice lawyers who were defending ICE, argued that "it is un-American to detain innocent children, immigrant or not, in poor conditions. We sued to enforce existing standards that are designed to protect immigrant children."
She said that "until we filed the litigation, the US government had been in blatant violation of the law by making children wear prison scrubs, get one hour of education a day, eat food of poor quality and nutritious value, restricting recreation outdoors to barely an hour, often less."
Gupta said it was "our litigation and the ensuing settlement that forced the government to make sweeping conditions reforms at the detention center, and on top of these reforms, the government has agreed not to place asylum seekers who have established a credible fear of persecution at the facility, except in the most exigent of circumstances requiring justification."
She said that after her Tulia experience, she had "reconnected with Texas all over again thanks to this case," but joked about how "I have been getting teased by friends and family about the fact that my big cases always take place in Texas."
However, she noted that "this was a lawsuit against the federal government," unlike Tulia which "involved state officials," but acknowledged with a laugh, "there's clearly something about the state that keeps bringing me back."
